Where Broadcast and Digital Cultures Collide: A Case Study of Public Service Media in Ukraine •

This case study-based analysis investigates the transformation of public service broadcasting into public service media in the digital age through the example of the emerging public service media landscape of Ukraine. This article suggests to clarify the terms ‘public service broadcasting online’ and ‘public service media’ and argues that public service media provide heterogeneous public service content specifically adjusted for each medium (television, the internet, mobile phones) and cultivate egalitarian relationships with the public applying the mixed model of communication. By contrast, public service broadcasters online re-translate the televisual content on the multimedia platforms, sustaining the hierarchical one-to-many model of communications. The concept of the two co-existing types of public service content providers has been explicitly illustrated by examples of the grassroots crowd-funded and crowd-sourced Ukrainian digital media Hromadske and the official, government-funded public service broadcaster UA:Pershyi. With European public service broadcasters currently struggling to reinvent their identity in the digital age, the case of Ukraine can help us see clearly how public service media are navigating the collision between broadcast and digital cultures.